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Topic: Mark's Movie Reviews (Read 21796 times)

There's a particle accelerator in space, to do an experiment. The experiment is necessary 'cause earth's population is out of control and if we don't find a new source of energy everyone will die. Frankly, far before we run out of energy we're going to run out of fertilizer and fresh water and insects, but whatever. Of course, as usual, there's a bunch of people worried about the accelerator will make something so high energy that it will rip the universe in half. Every time we build a new accelerator this comes up. Here's the thing: black holes and colliding neutron stars spew out particles with more energy than you can imagine, and these are hitting the earth constantly - cosmic rays. We've been hit by individual particles that have the energy of a school bus, sometimes billions of times more energy than we can make on earth. So it these things ripped the universe up, it would already be ripped up.

Well, in this move things go wrong, a rip happens, and our heroes find themselves in a parallel universe where things are similar but different. Things get seriously weird. They "lose" the earth, but then they find it on the other side of the sun, which their escape pods can bring them there - never mind that it would be about the same to go to mars and slightly cheaper to go to venus, their little pod is the little pod that could.

The science is awful, the acting poor, the horror parts unconvincing. And there's a twist at the end that comes out of absolutely no where and doesn't fit in the movie at all.

In the first five minutes of the series, supermans great great grandfather is killed for, um, well I'm not sure what the crime was, but he said there are other intelligences in the universe so they made him walk the plank. Seriously, then he falls from the top of a huge building thousands of feet. This happens immediately in front of supermans grandfather, who's a bit pissed about it. Now we jump forwards about twenty years, supermans grandfather is living in a slum with no name cause the house of el was dissolved. He gets visited by a time and space traveler from earth who tells him they have to stop brainiac, who is wandering through the galaxies killing off civilized planets. If they don't stop him he will destroy krypton before superman is born and the universe will lose its greatest protector. .

Last week I mentioned that at one planet per second it takes ten thousand years to check out a galaxy. And that requires traveling at hundreds of millions times the speed of light. There's another problem I didn't mention last time. The sun's habitable zone, the area where water can be liquid, extends from about one hundred million kilometres out to about two hundred fifty million kilometers. The earth is about twelve thousand kilometres across. If you pop out of warp drive somewhere above the sun, finding the earth somewhere in the habitable zone is like finding an orange somewhere in an area 1.5 miles on a side. In Larry nivens books when they get to a new star it takes them a couple days to find the planets and decide which might harbor life. But all that has to happen in a fraction of a second if you want to work through a galaxy in ten thousand years. And brainiac is killing off planets in hundreds or thousands of galaxies. It just sucks liking sci fi tv and knowing a bit of science.

In thus show krypton is a seriously screwed up place where a few people are rich and live in huge towers, and most everyone is poor and hopeless and scrabble for an existence on the ground, unarmed, uneducated, and living In a seriously obnoxious police state. Kinda like what France is quickly becoming. I thought krypton was supposed to be advanced and enlightened, but basically its a pretty sucko place.

The show has heavy Jewish overtones. The good guys are the house of El. El, of course, is the original name of the Hebrew God, and the Jews, his chosen people, are of the house of El. The bad guy is rao, the sun God, obviously a stand in for Ra, the Egyptian Sun god. All we need is for Jor-El to hold a bris just before launching Kal-El. Is superman circumcised?

Since the show is on krypton no one has superpowers. Only the bad guys have guns. And, like any good drama, no one but the bartenders and the cops seem to work, everyone just wanders around and emotes about the latest crisis.

You could die missing this one and it would be less than tragic.

« Last Edit: March 25, 2019, 09:56:12 PM by marklawrence »

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

Did a double header today in honor of the opening of the baseball season. "Spiderman into the Spiderverse" was well done, though the characters generally were woefully underdeveloped. Still worth seeing. Also saw "Aquaman". A very good superhero movie, with alternate rousing action and talking to set up the universe they live in. What struck me most though (SPOILER ALERT!) was when Aquaman was recognized as the true king of Atlantis, and emerged in a costume that was: Green and Gold! Then he defeated the rival king who was wearing: Purple! What a great touch- I truly wonder if the costume designer is secretly a Packers fan.

Produced, directed and starting Clint. Loosely based on a true story, or at least as true as newspaper stories get.

Clint plays a 90 yo guy who's a failure at life. He's broke, divorced, his daughter hasn't spoken to him in twelve years, and his house gets foreclosed. But he's never had a traffic ticket. A drug gang pays him to drive drugs from la to Chicago - they pay him a lot. Pretty soon for the first time in his life he has money. The story slowly evolves top a crises where Clint has to choose between family and money.

It was a good rendition of a somewhat thin story, not Clint's best, but just fine for a mindless evening of movie while waiting for the belligerent progressives to come out with infinity war end game.

Btw, I'm stunned as captain marvel passes up almost all movies as it also passes a billion dollars. I stand by my review, its not that good of a movie. It's ok, but there's no way it should have passed up Thor 3 and wonder woman.

« Last Edit: April 08, 2019, 07:19:34 PM by marklawrence »

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

Btw, I'm stunned as captain marvel passes up almost all movies as it also passes a billion dollars. I stand by my review, its not that good of a movie. It's ok, but there's no way it should have passed up Thor 3 and wonder woman.

"The Mule" was just another version of "Gran Torino". The gruff racist learns to be a better person.

Now, as to the success of "Captain Marvel", since when did a movie have to be good to get good box office? "Wonder Woman" was a movie with some excellent scenes, but overall, was pretty insipid. "Thor: Ragnarok" was fun, but also wandered all over the place, and while amusing, really was something you saw and quickly forgot about. So, indeed, most critics would agree with you- it's OK, but the lead character apparently lacks emotional range. Was this a decision by the director or actress, or a collaboration that decided that a female showing emotion was inherently "weak"? Who knows? Haven't seen it yet. As with almost all movies, when it comes to the budget cinema, sure, I'll give it a shot for $2.

People ask me all the time, "How do you watch these movies without going to the theater?"

ok, maybe it's not all the time, maybe it was just once. And maybe it's not people, maybe it was my dog. But that's not the point, you can watch most movies for free at either 123moviesok.net or pudlocker.fyi. When you're making selections etc they will open a bunch of new tabs and new windows. Close them as soon as possible, like instantly, and after about five you'll get to start your movie.

End game wraps up the entire Marvel universe to date, pretty much all the open story lines are closed. This is part 2 of Infinity War, so of course you have to watch that first. Thanos has killed off half of all life in the universe, and our heroes are determined to restore these uncountable millions of trillions of breeding and eating creatures to life. As you've almost certainly heard by now, this involves time travel and a quite complicated plot. There's about eleventy-hundred characters, so a lot of them only get about three lines, but the Russo brothers do an admirable job of balancing plot, dialog and characters.

You might have the preconception that this movie would be non-stop fight scenes, but in fact there's really only one fight scene and it only last perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Most of the movie is the superhero version of drama. The entire movie is a touch over three hours so pee before you start and have your popcorn and drinks all laid out.

The movie is very good, funny, tear-provoking (well, in most people, not me), and of course if you go in for this sort of thing it's a must see. Judging by the lines at the theaters, they're going to make a ton of money on this. Some guy in Wisconsin saw Captain Marvel 116 times, so one can only guess how many times he'll see this.

Curiously, we were kinda told Captain Marvel would make all the difference this time, but she was not a central player in the movie or the fight scene. There is a place where the women all gang up on Thanos, but they don't have any particularly more luck than the men. You gotta wonder, what's the point of superpowers if a dozen or so of you can't take down an 8 foot tall purple guy?

« Last Edit: April 26, 2019, 07:41:38 AM by marklawrence »

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

Saw "Fighting With My Family". Unexpectedly good. They took a tired formula and gave it some juice. Yes, its a wrestling movie (probably the one Barton Fink should have written), but it has heart, very good performances, and solid direction. My wife and I both agreed:

A group of Polish pilots who escaped nazi Poland make their way to Britain, where they get themselves a squadron of planes and join in the battle of britain. Based on a true story. It's an ok movie, it didn't really grab me. But then I've never been a big WWII buff. If you are, and you like dog fight scenes, this is your movie. There's a bit of gratuitous s#x and a whole bunch of gratuitous violence. They didn't have the pill so the girls were not so cooperative as today.

Over the course of six months the poles drop 126 nazi planes to about 8 losses of their own.

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

Nichol Kidman gives a very convincing performance as a burned out cop on a mission.

A few years ago she went under cover with a bunch of bad guys. Things went very wrong, and she went wrong too.

I can't say a lot about the plot because this is one of those movies with a couple of time tracks - the origin story unfolds at the same time as the consequences unfold. You're a bit confused at the start, but it all makes sense at the end.

It's reported that in a fight with Tom Cruise she said she was a real actor, he just ran around and shot people. Yah, this movie pretty much backs that up.

I liked it. Not the best movie of the year or nothin' like that, but it's ok for an evening.

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

This is the story of Hitler's last month or so. It's the source of that little video where Hitler is ranting, and they put in subtitles complaining about the Vikings choking or whatever. It's really quite a famous movie.

Downfall came out in 2004, it's not at all new. It's a German movie, filmed in German. I couldn't find one to stream with English subtitles so I bought a DVD for about $5 on EBay.

The movie was quite curious. I learned several things about Hitler and his people, but I also thought the movie dragged a bit. A lot of my friends are total WWII buffs, I'm sure they would love this movie. Me, I don't think I had a previous life where I died in WWII, so all these stories just don't really resonate with me.

We see Hitler refusing to give up even when it's really quite obvious that the Russians are just across the highway. We see the Germans around Hitler begging him to lead them to victory, a victory which from my American point of view was lost a couple years earlier when Hitler allowed the allies to bog him down in Greece for several months, then send his troops into Russia late in the year without proper winter gear. There's a lot of Germans who would rather kill their children and die rather than live without National Socialism (NAZI was the National Socialist party. They provided universal health care, free college education, job guarantees, living wages, really it was the progressive dream).

This is my second WWII flick this year, and I think I'm done for the year. Last year I watched Dunkirk, which was extremely highly rated but which I also think dragged. I just don't have the bug. BTW, Hitler wanted his armies to push through the english troops at Dunkirk, but his generals insisted they needed three days to resupply, and therefore left open a window for Churchill to rescue 300,000 of his men, half his army. Big mistake. Hitler called this one right. Those men came back later with US supplies and ammo and made a lot of trouble for him.

« Last Edit: May 06, 2019, 09:22:36 PM by marklawrence »

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

There's a lot of Germans who would rather kill their children and die rather than live without National Socialism (NAZI was the National Socialist party. They provided universal health care, free college education, job guarantees, living wages, really it was the progressive dream).

Aacatually, national health care was brought in by Bismarck. The Nazis just continued the practice- though they demanded that "racial purity" meant that a lot of people who were institutionalized were murdered. Free college educaiton? Sure, but the educational system was meant to indoctrinate the populace in Nazi beliefs- especially "racial purity". Defintiely, the economy improved hugely under the Nazis, but as far as helping the workers? Hardly. The aim was to help the manufacturers. Please feel free to google the accuracy of these statements. But here is a sampling of what was found within seconds: https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zcj6y4j/revision/4

Mads Michelson is an Acrtic worker who's plane crashed. He's in trouble. Then a helicopter finds him, and he's saved! 'cept the helo crashes, killing the pilot and leaving his wife all but dead. Now Mads is in trouble and has a near-death female to care for.

The entire movie has perhaps 100 words, all Mads talking to himself. It's actually pretty good. He seems, to my uneducated eyes, to pretty much know what he's doing, but when you're alone with little in the way of resources and freezing temps and a dying woman on your hands, you're in serious trouble.

It's kinda sorta similar to All is Lost, except in that one Redford was a really stupid sailor, so stupid even I could tell and I'm not a sailor.

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy.

Germany has a different model of corporation. Helping the corporations is helping the workers.

And the NAZIs were socialists. Who hated jews. If we're going to trade homework assignments, why don't you find out why the Germans hated the jews. And it's not because Hitler said to.

The Nazis were socialist because they used the title in the name of their party? Then apparently every country that uses or used the name "Democratic" in the title for their repressive state were democracies? Or run by American Democrats? Doesn't stand up. And, yes, there was a strong strain of anti-Semitism in Germany. As well as most of the rest of Europe. Nazis also hated communnists, (real) socialists, and anyone they considered to be inferior, including the Romani (gypsies). The film itself was generally excellent, and Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler was spectacular. Was your version subtitled? By the bye, went to see "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" my ex and her parents when it came out (1973). After the movie, my ex's dad opined that it was too bad Hitler didn't finish killing all the Jews. He wasn't joking.